Warren County Fiscal Court received an update Friday on the Bowling Green Ice Rink that indicated the facility so far is proving to be a bigger draw than initially expected.

In September, fiscal court paid $83,600 for the construction of the temporary rink, which runs from Nov. 23 to Jan. 8.

Josh Moore, director of public works, said that in the nine days the rink as been open, it has had nearly 2,800 skaters, with last weekend being especially busy.

“Over the weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we had over 1,800 skaters,” he said. 

Upon hearing this, Warren County Judge-Executive Mike Buchanon said attendance at the rink is exceeding expectations. Over the course of the six weeks the rink will be open, Buchanon said he was expecting about 6,000 people to come out and skate.

“That’s pretty remarkable,” he said of the new numbers.

Moore said a heating tent, which could potentially be used for events such as birthday parties, and a camera that will broadcast live footage of the rink on the rink’s website, sokyice.com, have been installed.

“It will stream 24 hours and you can watch folks skate and fall,” he said.

Meanwhile, fiscal court approved a yearly award to the Warren County Drug Task Force from the Appalachia High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.

Tommy Loving, director of the task force, said the award operates like a grant. This year, the task force is receiving $163,400 from HIDTA, Loving said, adding that the force has gotten roughly the same amount from the group for the last few years.

Money received from the HIDTA award pays for overtime for detectives from the Bowling Green Police Department, Kentucky State Police and the Warren County Sheriff’s Office who get assigned to work with the task force, as well as funding investigative travel and drug buys, which the force must make in order to convict someone of selling drugs, he said.

“The overtime is really what we look at as a force multiplier, because in drug investigations, it’s rarely a 40-hour week for our detectives and this enables them to keep going,” he said.

The task force has gotten the award every year since Warren County was named a HIDTA county in 2004, Loving said.

“When we became a HIDTA county, we were inundated with meth labs and that probably helped sell the case for becoming a HIDTA county,” he said.

Whether or not a county remains a HIDTA county is based partly on the drug situation in the county and partly on how productive the task force is, Loving said.

“If we laid down on the job and weren’t doing anything, they could pull our status,” he said.

In another matter, fiscal court also allowed the Parks and Recreation Department to sell three vehicles to Parrish Auto Parts for $450.

Parks Director Chris Kummer said the vehicles were two pickups and a Ford Expedition that used to be a sheriff’s office vehicle.

“They have been driven to the point where they need new transmissions,” he said, adding that the vehicles have also had trouble with their odometers, brakes and power steering.

The county originally planned to surplus the three vehicles, which have already been replaced, to Enterprise Leasing, which oversees the county’s fleet of vehicles, Kummer said.

Enterprise decided it would not get enough money from selling the vehicles to cover the cost of transporting them to Louisville, where they would have been sold, he said.

“They said, to save the county some money, just scrap them for junk,” he said.

— Follow reporter Jackson French on Twitter @Jackson_French or visit bgdailynews.com.